Improving Retail: Efficiency through technology
(4 Minute Read Time)
It’s a challenging time to be a retail business. There’s intense pressure on margins, fierce competition from online retailers and small start-ups, plus customer expectations have never been higher.
Most companies are investing in technology to improve their front-end experience, e-commerce, and customer journeys. 90% of retailers say the impact of this digital transformation has been good for business. Yet there is a recognition that more could be done – 78% of businesses say digital transformation should be more widespread in their organisation.
The fact is, no matter how good your customer experience, there are still big pockets of inefficiency in most retailers’ back-end processes. Accounting, finance, logistics, supply chain – bringing these up to date might not seem like an urgent priority for business, but in many cases these are slowing down the decision making and growth of the company.
Next generation technology can bring your back office up to speed with the rest of your company. It can give you the insight to make important decisions quickly. And it will help you keep your edge on competitors.
We're going to explore how modern business systems can help you overcome modern retail challenges.
It's common that retail organisations struggle with inaccuracies, like unrecorded transactions and discrepancies in transaction or stock data
Most organisations will have a back-end system that manages the business, from accounts through to stock. In addition to this system, an EPOS system that enables them to efficiently process transactions. Careful selection goes on to ensure the features and functionality of both systems suit the business wants and needs. However, the integration and sync between the two is rarely real-time, it could perhaps be hourly, or set to an x number of updates a day, hopefully at worst just once a day. How many times have you been to a retail outlet, requesting an item, perhaps seeking stock in another store - only to be told, our systems aren't always up to date.
This is not only limiting in terms of visibility from a business insight perspective, reducing timely decision-making with a lack of data such as best-sellers, performing or underperforming stores and much more. But impacting purchasing, slowing down the replenishment process. Customer Service, as data is siloed and then consider the customer experience (where much of the technology investment has already been spent), a customer is directly being told, our business system is inadequate.
Finally, when looking at business growth, a key factor in achieving this is being able to scale efficiently, when rolling-out new stores a limiting technology platform only adds to the complication.
The benefit of cloud-based technology
By selecting cloud-based technology, such as Sage Intacct and it's complete integration into Elite POS, you can manage multiple locations and business functions from one place, so as things move quickly, your system keeps up. Unlike older systems that don’t support real-time integration, modern cloud-based business management solutions bring it all together — purchasing, sales, customer service, EPOS and financial management, creating one unified system, scalable and feature-rich bringing modern technology to your business back-end.
Learn more about cloud financials for retail here
Or register for a short 20-minute coffee break demo of leading cloud finance solution - Sage Intacct